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A writer renowned for his insight into the mysteries of the body now gives us a lambent and profoundly moving book about the mysteries of family. At its center lies Sherwin Nuland’s Rembrandtesque portrait of his father, Meyer Nudelman, a Jewish garment worker who came to America in the early years of the last century but remained an eternal outsider. Awkward in speech and movement, broken by the premature deaths of a wife and child, Meyer ruled his youngest son with a regime of rage, dependency, and helpless love that outlasted his death.

In evoking their relationship, Nuland also summons up the warmth and claustrophobia of a vanished immigrant New York, a world that impelled its children toward success yet made them feel like traitors for leaving it behind. Full of feeling and unwavering observation, Lost in America deserves a place alongside such classics as Patrimony and Call It Sleep.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his late 30s and early 40s, National Book Award winner Nuland (How We Die) was gripped by a depression so unyielding to treatment he almost underwent a lobotomy (the procedure was halted by a young resident psychiatrist who refused to listen to his superiors). But as haunting as this beginning of Nuland's memoir is, it's eclipsed in power by the story he tells of his relationship with his father, an aging Jewish immigrant whose life was a series of family tragedies and illness. Avoiding the twin traps of nostalgia and emotional overkill, Nuland details, in beautiful, stark prose, his father's harsh life in America. Meyer Nudelman worked, and failed at, a variety of jobs and was broken by the death of his first child, the death of his wife and the near-fatal illness of another son. For him, America was never a land of opportunity, and his life sank into various debilitating physical ailments and unpredictable rages that inflicted terrible damage upon his son. The memoir's deep, shocking, emotional impact comes when Nuland, a student at Yale medical school, discovers by reading a textbook that his father's physical symptoms all indicated that he was suffering his whole adult life from tertiary syphilis. The shock of this discovery-which Meyer's doctors knew, but never told him-doesn't lead to an easy resolution. "In America" the author writes, "Meyer Nudelman was a man with no past," and by the end of the book readers realize that his dreams of a happier future were also impossible. Written with enormous empathy, yet without a hint of sentimentality, Nuland's memoir is both heartbreaking and breathtaking. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Conspicuously absent from Nuland's How We Die, a National Book Award winner in 1994, the author's father dominates this new memoir. In contrast to the graceful How We Die, this book appears conflicted, crowded, and emotion-laden, with Nuland allowing readers no distance from his discomfiting exploration of his relationship with his father, Meyer. Nuland describes his father's troubles as an immigrant from Bessarabia (between Russia and Romania) who struggled with unfulfilling, low-wage work and the early death of his wife and first son. He brings his father's voice to life by reproducing his heavily accented English and occasional use of Yiddish. The journey recounted is a personal and painful one, and Nuland's attempt is not to universalize this experience but to come to terms with it for his own understanding. Raw, personal autobiographies easily find their way to readers, and this book by Nuland, a departure from some of his better-known works, will attract a different audience. Larger public libraries will want to add this to their collections.Audrey Snowden, GSLIS (student), Simmons Coll., BostonCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Top customer reviews

Sherwin B. Nuland is a medical doctor who has written a number of good books on medically-related topics. Another one of his books on how humans die ("How we Die") is fascinating and not at all what you might expect--it actually focuses on the importance of appreciating and living one's life before death. "Lost in America" is Nuland's attempt to secure an understanding of his immigrant father, rather than the escape he long sought as a young man. With unflinching realism, honest assessments, and just enough humor to balance the text, Nuland movingly portrays his love/hate relationship with his father as he grows up in a Jewish section of the Bronx through his father's solitary death after Nuland has become a physician.

An epigraph before the text reads: "Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." It reflects Nuland's attempt to understand others in general, and his father specifically. The end of the book may not be what the average reader expects, but reflects Nuland's ongoing quest to find understanding. For anyone who is struggling to work out a father/son relationship or simply wants to "understand" as a means to heal, this is a great book. I have re-read it several times and highly recommend it.

This was a very candid account of the author's personal and family life growing up in the East Bronx in the 1930's and 1940's. He and his immigrant family had a difficult time adjusting to and growing up in America, particularly his father. While at times it is not easy to read because of their harsh reality, Dr. Nuland overcame it and he spares nothing in rendering this account of his early life.

An amazing, heart-warming story without an ounce of sentimentality. At once a book about family, a Bildungsroman, and a picture of a city and a time long gone. Dr. Nuland is a graceful writer, a scientist, and a true humanist. After reading this book, I immediately went looking for his other works. Ruth Fenner Barash, author of For Better or Worse: Lurching from Crisis to Crisis in America's Medical Morass